Alopochen kervazoi · Epoch Explorer

The Réunion sheldgoose or Kervazo's Egyptian goose is an extinct species of sheldgoose from Réunion. It was a close relative of the Egyptian goose and was about the same size. There is only one description remaining, that of Dubois made in 1674. Apart from that, the species is only known from brief reports and subfossil bones, collected by British ornithologist Graham S. Cowles. Dubois' full account reads as follows:Wild geese, slightly smaller than the European geese. They have the same feathering, but with the bill and feet red. They are very good [to eat].

Julian P. Hume, published with H. Glyn Young and Simon J. Tonge · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred

Also called: Réunion shelduckPBDB
Sits inside: AlopochenPBDB
Diet: herbivorePBDB, for Anatinae
Life habit: volantPBDB, for Anatinae
Motility: actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment: freshwaterPBDB, for Anatinae

Time the record covers

At most 12 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

5 occurrences of Alopochen kervazoi on record, most of them in the Holocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

5 occurrences

Holocene100%

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Alopochen kervazoi and its relatives

Holocene

Where Alopochen kervazoi and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

17 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Alopochen kervazoi, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

2 references

The avifauna of Réunion Island (Mascarene Islands) at the time of the arrival of the first EuropeansMourer-Chauviré et al., 1999 · Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology · serial monograph3
A new genus, three new species and two new records of extinct Holocene birds from Réunion Island, Indian OceanCowles, 1994 · Geobios · journal article2

Each of the 5 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Alopochen kervazoi

Source: Wikipedia/Commons
Credit: Julian P. Hume, published with H. Glyn Young and Simon J. Tonge
Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use: the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Alopochen kervazoi was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Source: Wikipedia, “Réunion sheldgoose”
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside it Alopochen through time Formations of the Holocene The world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Cowles 1994)